What Would Happen If You Drank Milk Through Your Nose?
This is What Would Happen If, a close examination of mundane hypothetical situations. Each week, we look at something that you could do but probably never would, and take it to its logical endpoint. This week: What would happen if chugged milk through your nose?
The nose knows, they say. And if you've ever gotten some liquid up your nose, then you know how much it smarts. But do you know what would happen if you tried to drink, say, milk through your nose? Let's get in the know… se.
First, a quick anatomy lesson. Our heads contain two important empty spaces, the nasal and oral cavity. As much as we'd like to think they're independent of each other, they both empty into the esophagus. This is why a hearty chuckle can eject what you're sipping on through your nostrils. In fact, all the mucus in your sinus that doesn't come out of your nose just regularly slides down your throat and into your stomach — on average, that's about two cups per day.
Because of this, uh, clever design, you can "drink" through your nose. We really don't recommend you do this at all. Even as a joke. There is, in fact, one website on the internet, if you can believe it, that not only advocates drinking through your nose, but drinking your own pee… through your nose to "feed, cool and evolve the brain." Drinkingthroughthenose dot com. Check it out.
Anyway, far be it from us to deny you the choice of imbibing through the other holes in your face. Here's how: Take your glass of milk, press the rim right underneath one of your nostrils, tip both your head and glass back, fill your nasal cavity with milk and then start swallowing. Congrats, you drank milk through your nose… if you want to call it that.
It's not so much a trick as it's brute forcing milk down your esophagus in a way your body was not designed to handle. As a result, there are complications, and even severe consequences.
The first thing you will notice is that none of this will feed good. It will burn, it will feel wrong, and unless the glass is sealed perfectly to your upper lip, you will spill milk down the front of your shirt. Now wait, you might be thinking, I use Neti Pots all the time and those don't hurt! True, but this is because Neti Pots use warm salt water and your nose's natural environment is warm, moist and slightly salty. Anything outside of that, like a chilled dairy product, and your nose will protest.
The second thing you might notice is that you'll wake up with a stuffy nose. Again, our noses were not designed to be flooded with liquid, so there's an outside chance that some milk might get trapped in your sinuses. Any bacteria in the milk, or any bacteria you manage to inhale with your milk-clogged nose could cause a sinus infection. This means inflammation, congestion, sinus pressure and even pain.
How likely is this to happen? Well, if it's any indication as to how sensitive your sinuses can be, both the FDA and CDC recommend that even when using a Neti Pot you should use sterilized water, lest you introduce organisms that can cause "potentially serious infections."
Unlike viral infections such as the common cold, bacterial sinus infections can persist for weeks on end and often require antibiotics to clear up. And if left untreated, there's a small chance that the infection could even spread to your brain. So, yes, you could die from attempting a stupid party trick. It would be safe to say that trying to drink milk through your nose is one of the few times that it would not do your body good.
